My essay sounds too casual. How do I make it sound more professional without changing what I'm arguing?

What “professional” means in a university essay

Instructors who write “too informal” in the margin are usually reacting to a handful of habits. Contractions (“it's”, “don't”). Filler and intensifiers (“basically”, “totally”, “really”, “super”). Slang and loose phrases (“kind of a disaster”, “a lot of”, “stuff”). The general “you” (“you can see that…”). Rhetorical questions in place of claims. And “I think” or “I feel” in front of a point that should be argued with evidence.

It does not mean longer words or longer sentences. “Utilize” is not more professional than “use”, and a paragraph full of “moreover” reads stiff, not academic. A professional essay is usually shorter than the casual draft it came from, because the filler goes and nothing replaces it.

First person is a separate question. The University of North Carolina Writing Center's handout on whether to use “I” (read 10 October 2026) says “I” can make writing clearer and that avoiding it can produce vague, awkward sentences; what weakens an essay is “I think” standing in for a defended argument. The same handout notes that academic writers almost always replace the general “you” with words such as “the reader” or “people”. Fields and instructors differ, so check your assignment brief or ask.

One paragraph, before and after

Before, 56 words: “Basically, remote work has totally changed what downtowns look like. You can see it on a Friday, when a lot of office buildings are half empty. I think this is a good thing because people get their commute time back, but it's kind of a disaster for the cafés and shops that relied on office workers.”

After, 48 words: “Remote work has changed how downtowns are used. On Fridays, many office buildings stand half empty. For employees, the shift is largely a gain, since they recover the hours they once spent commuting. For the cafés and shops that relied on office workers, it is a serious loss.”

What changed: “basically” and “totally” went. “You can see it” became a direct statement. “A lot of” became “many”. “I think this is a good thing because” became a claim with its reason attached. “Kind of a disaster” became “a serious loss”, which keeps the strength of the original without the slang. The contraction went.

What stayed: the claim, the Friday example, both sides of the argument and their order. Nothing new was added. If your instructor wants a source for the half-empty buildings, that is yours to find and cite.

Words to swap, and words to leave alone

Swap loose words for exact ones: “a lot of” for “many” or “much”, “go up” for “rise”, “kids” for “children”, “nowadays” for “today” or the actual year, “look into” for “examine”, “big” for “large” or “major”, “get” for whatever you mean (“receive”, “become”, “earn”). Replace “things” and “stuff” with the noun you had in mind, and “really important” with the reason it matters.

Leave plain words alone when they are already exact. “Use”, “help”, “show”, “but” and “because” are fine in any essay. Swapping them for “utilize”, “facilitate”, “demonstrate”, “however” and “due to the fact that” adds length and nothing else.

A quick test: if a reader could ask “how much?” or “which ones?” after a word, it is too vague for an essay. If they would need a dictionary for a word you would never say out loud, it is probably too stiff.

How Rewrite handles it, and where you still decide

Change the tone keeps the content and the structure of your text and changes how it is said. Rewrite as a whole is built to keep your meaning, facts, names and numbers, to add no new information and to keep your paragraphs as they are. By default, a light red pen pass runs after the tone change and cuts stock phrases. Fix spelling & grammar does less: it corrects spelling, punctuation and grammar only, with the red pen off, which is why it works as the last pass.

Pick Formal for most university essays. Professional fits a paper written like a workplace document, such as a business case or a policy memo addressed to a decision maker.

Two things stay with you. A tone change can make a cautious claim sound certain, or a firm one sound hedged, so compare the strength of each claim with your original. And the argument itself, the thesis, the evidence and the analysis, is not something a tone pass improves. If a paragraph is weak, it will come back formal and still weak.